Looking Backward

What The Wave Said20Years Ago...

Ire is coming in faster than it can be recorded because a major carnival was set up this week at the old Public School 44 site bordering in part Beach 92 and 94 streets, and Holland Avenue in Rockaway Beach, an all-residential area.

Working closely with a new Temporary Uniformed Task Force established in the Rockaways effective April 7 by the New York City Housing Authority Police Department, TNT (the police department's special Tactical Narcotic Team) will stay on the peninsula at least another month.

Two men were found shot to death last Friday morning, April 21, about an hour and a quarter after midnight, in the lobby of the building at 5132 Beach Channel Drive (the Edgemere Houses in Edgemere).

Members of the Belle Harbor Property Owners Association Inc. are appealing to New York Governor Mario Cuomo to make the legislature aware that "another dramatic and huge increase real estate tax is scheduled to be imposed upon the residents of our area" and how unfair the New York State tax law is.

Friends of Rockaway Inc. (a local environmental group) has asked the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and the New York City Audubon Society to develop a "mosquito control management plan" for a new park refuge in Arverne called Dubos Point.

"This is the day that the Lord has made!" (from Psalm 118) sang approximately 80 persons, including 16 clergy from 14 protestant, Catholic and Jewish congregations, who got together on April 16 for a Rockaway Mosaic.

Detective Jerry Weiser of the squad at the 101 Precinct is awaiting a report from the coroner that will determine whether or not there was a case of homicide when the body of a woman was found earlier this month in a laundry room at 707 Beach 9 Street, Far Rockaway.

30 Years Ago...

Rockaway, prepare for flooding! The Fifth Ward Repair Shop at 20-16 Nameoke Street, is all ready to move out; and the personnel in the sewer shop at Beach 75 Street and Amstel Boulevard, expect to leave in about a week.

Operation Survival III (to save St. Gertrude's R.C. Church, Edgemere and its many activities) will be held Sunday, June 2, at Stella Maris High School, Beach 111 Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard.

Queens Borough President Donald Manes came out this week with a strong opposition to the closing of the Queens Office of Sewer Construction. The proposal, which is not certain, calls for moving the operation to Manhattan.

Charles C. Nicholsen of 32 West 10 Road, Broad Channel, has applied for a permit "to maintain a bulkhead and fill in Jamaica Bay at Broad Channel."

40 Years Ago...

A three-story house on Beach 35 Street and Beach Channel Drive, which once overlooked Norton Creek, long since filled in, has been demolished in preparation from the new Edgemere housing project. It was once owned by Clinton Norton.

Several youngsters have been out with trowels, cutting back grass and weeds and in other ways tidying up around the memorial flag pole at Beach 34 Street and Edgemere Avenue.

Commuters can expect to see one of the Long Island Rail Road's new trains on a regular run on the Far Rockaway branch in another week or two.

The coming celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first trans-Atlantic flight is reviving hopes that someday a monument will be erected at Riis Park to commemorate the fact that the flight started from the former Rockaway Naval Air Station.

50Years Ago...

Somebody should start keeping a record of the number of near fights which ensue when two drivers race for a vacant parking meter that has time left on it. The time they "save" is sometimes spent in heated argument over who is entitled to park in the space.

Acts of community service were commonplace here in the old days, we are told, but most of them went unheralded and unsung. For example, Sam Appleby used to leave his place of business and drive the ambulance for Rockaway Beach Hospital to fill an emergency need.

One of the building inspectors assigned to this area thinks its going to be a switch inspecting new buildings in the housing projects. Most of their time is now spent on buildings to be condemned.

It is a water main that is being laid under Cross Bay Boulevard, not a sewer as some people had believed. The new main is 48 inches.